The Street Where You Live

I love where I live. I love the people here. I live in a suburban community 25 miles outside of downtown Atlanta. That makes this place a little bit country, and a little bit rock and roll, along with an increasing usage of words like solid and shawty.

My heart is burdened for the people here and all over Metro Atlanta. Recently, Paulding County’s Children’s Cabinet did an honest assessment of our community. The Children’s Cabinet is made up of the people that do the hard work of helping families day in and day out. They work in child and family services among the hurting, abused, and the needy. As a church and/or community leader, if you don’t know the hard facts about where you live, you can’t respond and bring wholeness and healing.

I wonder how many churches know with any authority the condition of their community? If we are trying to reach unchurched people we may need to poll more than just our own congregations to ‘reveal’ what they think ought to be taught on. That’s a great way to carry a congregation forward in discipleship, but there has got to be balance. Understanding the condition of the heart of those outside of our churches is a little more difficult, but there are places to go and questions to ask if leaders really want to know the answers, and if you really want to reach them.

These are real stats. Some of them are more disheartening than others. All of them can be motivating.

Paulding County is officially the 5th largest growing county in the country. We have 136,000 living here. Around 88% of them don’t attend church. Some of the percentages below would be much higher if we didn’t live in the 5th fastest growing county in the country. All of these numbers increase the close you get to urban Atlanta.

• 7.7% of our suburban residents live in poverty. Food pantries are nice to relieve the symptoms, but I think we need to do more. This is a matter of regular prayer.
• Children living in poverty increased from 9.2% in 2003 to 9.4% in 2008; the state’s percentage rose from 19.1% to 20.2% for those same years.
• Teen pregnancy has dropped (ages 15-19), but STD’s are on the rise. They are up almost 40% in the last 4 years.
• Children living with a single parent increased from 14.8% (3,689) children to 20.4% (7,121 children) (2000-2006); The amount of people nearly doubled.

• Eligible households, with children, receiving Food Stamps has increased from 696 to 1,361 (2003-2007). [This program is being cut back a bit right now on a Federal level]
• Unemployment increased from 4.0% in 2004 to 10.7% in 2009; Georgia’s trend was similar: 4.2%-10.2%.
• Total number of homeless students increased from 10 in school year 04/05 to 687 in school year 09/10. This humber is expected to be higher for the 2010/11 school year.

How do you define a homeless kid in suburbia? These are kids who are sitting in school today, but have no solid idea of where they will sleep tonight? They go from home to home, couch to couch.

• There were 1285 cases of domestic violence in 2009; a 30.85% increase from 2007

Trends are a big deal. Anyone can move into a community and say there are less fortunate families or broken homes. These things that are on the rise need to be fought against and counteracted right now. Leaders inside and outside the church have a history of finding out way too late what the needs are, and then just treating the symptoms. We have to teach and reach to the root of these issues if our leadership is ever going to be relevant in a community.

I’m not saying that I or the church I serve at as answers to all of this. I do believe that with the right information we can ask the right questions, instead of sitting around making up the questions and answers on our own.

Everyone Belongs,

Paul